If anyone's reading this (I know
someone does because I check stats because I'm insecure), you might
be surprised that it's taken me this long to post another review.
This is partly due to laziness on my part, and partly to do with the
general chaos and uncertainty of early adulthood. Enjoy your freedom
while you have it, kids.
Today though I'm struggling to return
to some sort of format by reviewing the 2004 comedy horror icon,
Shaun of the Dead.
The movie centres on 29-year-old
loser Shaun (Simon Pegg), stuck in a dead-end job, a failing
relationship and living with his burnout friend Ed (Nick Frost).
After a disastrous break-up with his girlfriend Liz (Kate Ashfield),
Shaun pledges to turn his life around. It's around this point that
zombies begin to stalk the streets of London, massacring and feasting
on anyone they catch. Shaun seizes the opportunity to prove himself
by shepherding Liz and his mother to his local pub, the Winchester.
Shaun of the Dead is one of those
movies that experts on British TV would call star-studded. The
starring duo of Pegg and Frost, along with director Edgar Wright, all
cut their teeth with the cult show Spaced, fans of which will enjoy
the spiritual connection. Shaun may as well be Tim Bisley a few years
down the line, where his dreams of comic book stardom have crashed
and his life has lost all meaning. Nick Frost's Ed is an even more
extreme example of loserdom, though Ed at least has accepted his lot
in life, to the point where he fails to notice the impact his
slothfulness has on other people.
The actors' real-life friendship adds a
lot to the central dynamic, particularly when Ed tries to console
Shaun after his break-up, and also when the two try to make a plan to
survive the zombie apocalypse. Pegg is a charming enough actor to
make you root for Shaun despite his major flaws, such as taking his
girlfriend for granted. Ed, as a character, is a lot more obnoxious
and is there more to lighten the film's darker moments. There are
points where I felt (especially towards the end) where I feel Ed was
a bit too over-the-top and I found part of myself wishing the zombies
would just eat him already.
Kate Ashfield gives a decent
performance, though she's relegated to playing the “straight man”
to a host of more over-the-top characters. Black Books' Dylan Moran
shines as her creepy wannabe-boyfriend, David, while also making for
an interesting comparison with Shaun. David has a more successful
career as a lecturer, and a girlfriend of his own, but his pining
after Liz makes him seem somehow more pathetic – especially as he
spends more of the film complaining then trying to be proactive. Lucy
Davis also stands out despite a fairly small role as Di, Liz's friend
and David's girlfriend. Like Ed, her character serves mostly for
comic relief. However, this makes her dramatic shift towards the end
of the film all the more impressive.
The film also has two British veterans
as Shaun's mother Barbara (Penepole Wilton) and step-dad Philip (Bill
Nighy). Wilton does a decent job but I feel like the film could have
done more to establish a relationship between her and Shaun. In fact,
I felt that Barbara's strangely muted reactions to the zombies was
going to be a plot point – as in, perhaps the reason Shaun had been
distant towards her was because she was going senile or something?
Nighy is another performer who does a lot with a small role. His is
another relationship with Shaun that really could have been expanded
more, given all the potential it has. Shaun weeping as Philip dies is a
great scene, but I feel it should have happened later in the film to
add more weight. Then again, the film's final act is quite brutal for
a comedy film, so perhaps Wright and Pegg wanted to space the deaths
out a bit.
This brings me on to the next point.
The first two acts of the film are a comedy with a few touches of
horror here and there. The focus is less on the zombies and more on
Shaun and Ed's confused reactions to them. The duo treat the epidemic
more like an inconvenience than a threat to the human race. The
climax of the film reverses this balance, turning into a
bloody horror-thriller with only a few jokes here and
there. When I first saw Shaun of the Dead (about ten years ago), I
found the tonal shift off-putting and the gore and trauma to be
incongruous next to the irreverence of the film's opening. This time
around, I didn't find it quite so jarring, though I still feel Hot
Fuzz did a better job maintaining a consistent tone. This is probably
one of those cases where the first film is a learning process upon which later films build, though
that's not factoring in The World's End (which I haven't seen since
it's release and would need to revisit).
As for the overall theme of growing up,
what I found interesting about the film is that . . . it doesn't
really tackle it. A conventional movie would reduce the zombie
epidemic to an allegory for the tribulations of life, with Shaun
rising to the challenge and proving himself a hero – and also that
he's ready to grow up.
Instead, the movie's treatment of this
theme is more cynical. Look at the sequence where Shaun forms and
then rapidly adjusts his survival plan: “Take car. Go to Mum's.
Kill Phil. Grab Liz. Go to the Winchester. Have a nice cold pint and
wait for all this to blow over.” This is, I feel, one of the film's
funniest moments. It also demonstrates Wright's manic editing style,
which is well-suited to Shaun's short-hand.
The sequence shows Shaun's refusal to
take the crisis serious, using it as an excuse to have another pint.
One would expect Shaun to grow and become more noble as the film
progresses, and he certainly tries, growing more empathetic to the
plight of those around him. However, by the film's end, with the
crisis averted, Shaun is back to where he was at the start, only now
he's lounging on the couch with Liz instead of Ed. Liz, by contrast,
goes from wanting to try new and exciting things (and dumping Shaun
for lacking her enthusiasm), to happily settling for a life of ease.
The film starts off poking fun at the
“zombifying” effect the rat race has on people, and yet by its end society hasn't really progressed. In World War Z (the book, not
the movie), the epidemic has a profound psychological impact on the
survivors, who radically reassess their lives in the face of the
horror they've witnessed. In Shaun of the Dead, the survivors
incorporate the epidemic into the tedium of before, with zombies
showing up in talk shows and reality TV. Despite its unconventional
style and heavy use of humour, Shaun of the Dead stays true to the
Romero-interpretation of zombie-dom – that zombies are an allegory
for the drudgery and inescapability of modern day life.
Is it worth seeing though?
Yeah boyyyyyyyy!
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